News
May 2010 / Sara Hughes review in The Age
Sara Hughes' exhibition World Wide Optimism is reviewed in The Age in Melbourne. Reviewer Dan Rule writes The sheer statistical depth [of the work] is dumbfounding, but what grants these works their real vigour is their semiotic complexity and sense of aesthetic paradox. Indeed, while Hughes's arrangements and compositions espouse a syntax of graphs, diagrams and other visual techniques for mapping economic data, her colour palette effectively hijacks and eschews our analysis at every turn. Read the full article online here. Sara will be exhibiting at Gow Langsford Gallery in November.
March 2010 I Sara Hughes at Federation Square, Melbourne
Sara Hughes' recent project Heat Wave responds to the location of Federation Square and with a wider contextual context that relates to issues of climate change and Australian culture. The work is made up from a group of eleven umbrellas created to become giant pie charts referencing particular statistics; they are attached to concrete upturned water tanks that have the reference of each statistic painted onto them.
There is an ironic or incongruous nature of beach looking umbrellas taking up the middle of a city square. As areas of public space shrink within contemporary cities and move towards the commercially owned and motivated (often filled with cafes sporting umbrellas sponsored by drink, food and cigarette companies) this project negotiates aspects of the culture landscape to produce an aesthetically and critically engaging environment.
The project will be up till the 25th April. For more information see the Federation Square website.
Sara Hughes' For Kultur opens in early March at the Hawkes Bay Museum and Art Gallery.
"Museums and Art Galleries are the holders of our histories and meanings; preserving cultures and civilisations as time passes. The way in which collections develop has an influence on our understanding of both the past and the present. These ideas come together in For Kultur, an ambitious exhibition by leading contemporary artist Sara Hughes. Hughes has been working closely with the HBMAG team, researching the collection and developing a new installation that draws on some of treasures of the Hawkes Bay Cultural Trust collection." (sourced from HBMAG newsletter)
For Kultur is on 12 March - 27 June 2010. See the Hawkes Bay Museum and Art Gallery website for opening times.
November 2009 I Sara Hughes Publication
Sara Hughes new publication Feedback Runaway is now available for purchase. Published by Revolver Publishing in Germany, Feedback Runaway includes texts by Christoph Tannert and Christina Vgh and was produced during her residency at the Kuenstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. See publication details here and contact us to purchase (RRP $65).
November 2009 I Sara Hughes' commission at Central Park, Papakura
Commissioned by Papakura District Council, Sara Hughes has been working with Chow:Hill Architects on a permanent outdoor stage at Central Park in South Auckland. The stage is now open to the public and will host the first performance on December 4. Hughes has covered the roof, floor and structural supports for the roof with blasts of colour which give the impression of a giant lightbox.
April 2009 I Sara Hughes Feedback Runaway in Berlin
Sara Hughes first solo show in Berlin opened last weekend. Feedback Runaway is a body of new work created during her Creative New Zealand sponsored residency at the Kunstlerhaus Bethanien.
For Feedback Runaway Hughes has collected data from the financial pages of the Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper and transformed it into an installation that takes over the gallery space. Seemingly overloaded with information, the installation covers walls, floors and the ceiling of the gallery with representations of data ranging from the imperative to the trivial. Hughes states that I have an ongoing concern with 'what we see' and 'how we see' and I am interested in the structures via which information gets transacted; particularly in relation to our media saturated world that has become mediated and regulated by information.
The exhibition runs 26th March - 12th April. For further information see Kunstlerhaus Bethanien. 
19. 02. 09 I Sara Hughes talks about the Artbus project, Auckland Festival, 2009
Vehicle culture is ingrained in all countries and nations, I am interested in how this has developed and become a global phenomenon, yet at the same time how the local and the personal are always evident. There is a human desire to alter, personalize and create identity through the embellishment of vehicles; black and white fluffy dice at the front or a pink crocheted Kleenex box at the rear. There is the sixteen year old who paints his Ford Escort black to fit with the crowd and then the Indian truck owner who paints a brightly coloured horn ok please sign on the back of his truck to stand out from the crowd.
The concept of my design is connected to aspects of travel; road trips, highway loops, byway detours and the desire to be picked up and whisked away to another reality.
Drawing upon a wide array of influences and imagery connected to the embellishment of vehicles, I am influenced by my experiences of riding ornately painted open backed trucks in the Philippines, to late night rides in decorated Tuktuks in Bangkok, to overtaking glossy hot rods on American freeways. Memories of rainbow painted house trucks from my youth get melded with my admiration for the perfect pin stripe.
This description sets the scene to my approach of being invited by the Auckland Festival to create an artwork for a Bus from the NZ Bus fleet. While my bus design may pale into significance compared to elaborate Pakistani truck decoration, it aims to reinterpret elements long used in vehicle embellishment in a new and contemporary way. I have created a graphic environment inhabited with birds and flowers mixed with swirls of pattern and flames to create a Baroque surreal profusion of colour and imagery that incorporates both abstract and representative imagery.
I am currently living in Berlin where I am undertaking the Creative New Zealand, Knstlerhaus Bethanien Art Residency for one year. A city in which public transport is highly effective and efficient, many trips from home to the studio have been spent thinking about the issues and imagery explored in my bus design. I thank NZ Bus and the Auckland Festival for the invitation to create this work, I have enjoyed enormously the opportunity to create an artwork that will move through the city and be seen and used by a wide array of people.
Sara Hughes January 2009
14. 08. 08 I Sara Hughes awarded Creative New Zealand Visual Arts Berlin Residency 2008/9
I am interested in developing a project that examines the cultural and political context of the Olympics with specific reference to the Beijing Games (2008) and the Berlin Games (1937). I specifically want to investigate imagery and data relating to patterns of behaviour and configurations of spectacle and national identity as portrayed through the use of colour, consumerism and propaganda.
Previous New Zealand recipients of the Creative New Zealand residency at Knstlerhaus Bethanien are Peter Robinson (2000), Michael Stevenson (2002), Ronnie van Hout (2004) and Mladen Bizumic (2006).The Berlin residency is one of a number of international artist residencies offered by Creative New Zealand to provide opportunities for New Zealand artists to develop their practice and build international networks.
For more information please refer to www.creativenz.govt.nz
01.07.08 I Sara Hughes wins RIPE: Art & Australia Magazine Award
Sara Hughes was recently announced as the first New Zealand recipient of the RIPE:Art & Australia Magazine/ANZ Private Bank Contemporary Art Award. The award promotes the work of emerging artists, publishing an image of the winner's work on the back cover of Art & Australia magazine. RIPE recipients are further supported via the acquisition of at least one of their artworks to the Art & Australia Magazine Collection. Two artists are selected every six months. Artist entries are administered by the National Association for the Visual Arts Ltd (NAVA).
For further information, visit the NAVA website:www.visualarts.net.au/grantsprizes/ripe
12.06.08 I Sara Hughes in MiNDFOOD magazine
MiNDFOOD Magazine spends '5 minutes with Sara Hughes' as she reveals the impetus for new works conceived during a year in the U.S. fulfilling two artist's residencies. Hughes will exhibit new paintings in 'Scales of Economy' at Gow Langsford opening July 1.
02.09.08 I Sara Hughes: United We Fall
United We Fall was created for the Christchurch Art Gallery and was curated by Justin Paton. It is the first in a series of 'Glasshouse' projects, a programme of major works commisioned for the art gallery's foyer. This densly patterned work intervenes with the gallery architecture; covering the raise of the stairs and running along the glass balistrade of the first floor, the grey stone and concrete now colonised by Sara Hughes saturated palette.
The concept for the work was developed during the two U.S residencies Hughes undertook last year.
I have recently returned to New Zealand after spending a year in America where I was influenced by the current US political climate and the issues surrounding the hotly contested Democratic Primary Elections and the pending economic crisis. Responding to the ways colour and power are intertwined; this work makes use of statistical data that relates to the colours of world flags. I want to turn the lobby of the Art Gallery into a cascade of marching, pulsating, saturated colour that questions both the local and global space it occupies.
Sarah Hughes
United We Fall will be installed at in the main foyer of the Christchurch Art Gallery until August 2009. Sara Hughes is also featured this months Artist Profile Magazine: http://www.wolseleymedia.com.au/AP-Sara-Hughes.html
Of Deities or Mortals at the Christchurch Art Gallery
Recent works by Sara Hughes and Reuben Paterson are included in Of Deities or Mortals at the Christchurch Art Gallery, open from 16 November 2007 - 10 February 2008. Titled after a line in John Keats' poem Ode on a Grecian Urn, Of Deities or Mortals takes eight objects from the University of Canterbury's James Logie Memorial Collection of Greek artifacts, and invites eight contemporary New Zealand artists to create a response. For more information about the show and featured artists, visit the Christchurch Art Gallery or email info@gowlangsfordgallery.co.nz
2007
A new installation by Sara Hughes is on show at Te Manawa Gallery in Palmerston North until the 15 July. Entitled Flower Wall (2007), the work is comprised of thousands of brightly coloured hand-painted die-cut paper flowers, seamlessly blending technology and the hand-made. A comparable work entitled Flower Field(2007) can be viewed in the In Fluorescents show at Gow Langsford Gallery until 30 May.
The Big Stick Up, an installation by Hughes that was first seen at the Hazelhurst Regional Art Gallery in New South Wales, has recently been installed at The Suter Art Gallery in Nelson. The exhibition runs from the 20 April - 10 June, 2007.
Hughes will also exhibit in a curated group show at Pataka Gallery from the 13 May - 12 August and will feature alongside Andrew McCleod, Kelcy Taratoa, Tim Thatcher and Gow Langsford Gallery artist, Darryn George. New Painting: Digital Age, curated by Helen Kedgley, highlights the reconciliation of digital technology with traditional painting techniques which are central to the practice of this group of influential young artists. The exhibition opens with a panel discussion with the artists on the 13th May 2007.
At the end of May, 2007, Hughes will take up a residency at the ISCP (International Studio and Curatorial Programme) in New York as the recipient of the Paramount Prize in the Wallace Art Awards (2005). Following the ISCP residency she will take up another at The McColl Center for Visual Arts in Charlotte, North Carolina, from January through April, 2008.
Sara Hughes: Artlink "Nine Great Artists"
The latest issue of Australia's Artlink magazine features an article on the work of Sara Hughes, as part of their "Nine Great Artists" lineup. The article focuses on Hughes' recent installation at Hazelhurst Regional Gallery and is written by Rhana Devenport (Director, Govett-Brewster Art Gallery).